This week, Facebook, the biggest social media site on the planet with 1.6bn users and which derives its income from advertising, decided to tackle the issue by introducing new controls on ads in tandem with software that blocked ad-blocking software.

Digital blockade running

However, this gambit at blocking the pesky ad blockers was quickly met with defiance by popular ad blocker Adblock Plus, which drew on support from the open source community to come up with a workaround.

What ensued has been a game of cat and mouse, as Facebook responded with its own code to nullify Adblock Plus’ attempts at a workaround.

“This sort of back-and-forth battle between the open source ad-blocking community and circumventers (sic) has been going on since ad blocking was invented,” said Adblock Plus.

“So it is very possible that Facebook will write some code that will render the filter useless — at any time. If that happens, the ad-blocking community will likely find another workaround, then Facebook might circumvent again.”

It looks like it is going to be a war of attrition between Facebook, with its powerful user base and vast resources, and controversial players like Adblock Plus, which can rally legions of sympathetic open-source programmers to its flag.